


Ice-cream

by BurningTea



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Seaside, ice cream lesbians, ice-cream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9825956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: Mikel takes Aimee away to the seaside.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Someone had to write these two at some point. And then tidal_race made put some photos of them together and they were going to the sea, so here we are. 
> 
> This is for everyone who has been involved in discussing this pairing on tumblr.

Sea breeze lifts Aimee’s hair, darting a soft chill round the back of her neck. She pulls her jacket more tightly around herself, but she doesn’t move from the railing. 

Below her, waves crash against rock. Spray reaches her, silting salt against her skin, and she’s got the feeling her hair is going to be hell to brush later. It’s worth it, though. More than worth it. There’s a peace here, on this gray-blue day, that she hasn’t felt as often as she’d like in her life. 

“Happy?” a low voice asks from behind her.

Aimee smiles, half turning to see Mikel standing a few feet away, those ridiculous sunglasses on her face and an ice-cream in each hand. 

“Yes,” she says, because things with Mikel are far simpler than she ever let herself believe they’d be. “One of those for me?”

Mikel shrugs, a smile playing at the edges of her lips. Aimee can’t see the light in the woman’s eyes, but she can imagine it. 

“No,” Mikel says. “I do a lot of physical exercise. I need all of the ice-cream.”

“Oh, come on,” Aimee says. “Not like it’s only hitters who use their bodies.”

She lets herself smirk as she says it, and shifts enough to draw attention to herself. Not that Mikel needs reminding Aimee is right here. That’s one of the many things Aimee is learning to love about her - Mikel has a lot of focus. 

“If you make it worth my while, I suppose you can have one,” Mikel allows, smiling properly as she steps closer.

Aimee takes the one from Mikel’s left hand and tastes it. It’s creamy and delicious, but even if it had been the cheapest ice-cream she’d ever had, it would have been good right now. 

Mikel joins her at the railing and they watch the waves together as they eat, the quiet between them aching only in the sense there’s a promise for later. It’s more restful than anything. 

“I like it here,” Aimee says. “You sure we can’t just move out here for good?”

“And leave your horses?” Mikel asks.

“Yeah, I suppose not. And you’d get bored,” Aimee says. “No-one to hit.”

Mikel leans in and nudges Aimee with her shoulder, sending them both rocking just a bit.

“I’d find things to do,” she says. “There is corruption everywhere. People need protection everywhere.”

Aimee nods, but she can’t quite bring herself to believe it, not about this town. It’s small, perched partly on the cliffs and partly by the beach, and the beach itself is more rocks than anything, but it has a small tourist industry. Just enough Aimee doesn’t feel like she’s intruding on a small home town she doesn’t belong in. 

She thought, when she first started this thing with Mikel, that it might burn hot and fizzle out. Meeting at all was a coincidence, a function of Aimee calling Leverage for help on a friend’s behalf and it turning out Mikel was working with them that month. Eliot was laid up with a bad leg, something Aimee heard all about over comms as the guy fussed about not being with his people, but from what Aimee saw, Mikel was more than up to the job.

If the job ended up with a couple of nights in a hotel, this time without any comms and most certainly not under Parker’s directions, no-one but Aimee and Mikel needed to know.

So it had been a surprise when Aimee had opened her door a few weeks later to find Mikel standing there, a sports car behind her and a smile on her face, asking if Aimee wanted to go find somewhere they could get lost for a while. 

Aimee’s dad was surprisingly supportive of Aimee having a holiday, and now here they are. 

“I guess I can’t just leave dad to handle things on his own,” Aimee says.

“And you wouldn’t want to,” Mikel says calmly, just stating a fact. “We can visit again.”

She says that calmly, too, as though it isn’t even worth worrying about. There’s a whole assumption about a future there that Aimee wants to grab hold of and keep, but she finds she can’t quite do it. She’s been left behind too many times before.

She doesn’t say that, though. Instead, she finishes her ice-cream and stares out to sea, and lets herself enjoy Mikel’s warmth next to her while it lasts.

***

Mikel’s been quiet for a while, her arm draped over Aimee’s stomach and her face so close to Aimee’s shoulder that her breath tickles Aimee’s skin. Aimee’s been drifting, content in the warmth and comfort of the bed they share, the sound of the ocean filling those blank spaces in her head that can spiral into thinking too hard on things. 

She’s been half thinking about her dad and about the horses and about how she did choose that life, deciding not to move any of the times she could’ve done. And thinking that things change. 

“You think too much,” Mikel says. 

Aimee shifts enough that she can press a kiss to Mikel’s hair, but it’s more an undulation of her body than anything especially active. 

“Hardly a thought in my head just now,” she says.

Mikel snorts, a harder puff of air on Aimee’s shoulder.

“I can feel you thinking. You think more than I do, and I have to think quickly in my work or I’ll die.”

She says it so casually, as though it’s something anyone might have to face, and there’s none of the pain there Aimee might have expected to find. Mikel is at peace with who she is, as far as Aimee has been able to see so far. 

“Horses can be deadly,” Aimee says, mock serious. “You’d be surprised how much is needed to outsmart them.”

“I’m sure,” Mikel says. She wriggles, suddenly up on one elbow and gazing down at Aimee, her hair falling over them both. “Still, you think too much.”

Aimee isn’t sure if she’s meant to apologize, but before she can do anything Mikel leans in and kisses her, and soon after that she finds her mind is taken up with other things. Mikel is skilled in many ways.

***

“We should head back,” Aimee says, and wants the words back. At the very least, she should have said ‘I’. 

Mikel tilts the wine glass she holds, the candle-light reflecting along the surface and turning the wine a deeper red. Around them, the sounds of people talking and of cutlery being used fill any gaps in conversation. It’s not the same as the sea, and Aimee’s hoping Mikel will agree to a walk along the seafront in the dark after they’re done eating, but it’s still pleasant. 

It’s certainly not that she wants to give up on this. It’s just that even the sounds of the swelling sea can’t wash away her sense of duty. And she really does love her life. She does. It’s just been nice to step away from it for a while, for a break. 

“Perhaps,” Mikel says. She looks up, her eyes catching that candle-light, and she looks beautiful and wild and full of a kind of passion Aimee isn’t sure she possesses herself. “We can go back. If you want. But I know a little place up the coast. A hotel with a stable. I thought we could ride along the cliffs. You can have your horses and the sea.”

It’s tempting. It really is. Aimee hesitates.

“My dad might need me,” she says. 

If she turns back, if she goes home now, before Mikel can disappear, it might not hurt. 

“Your father told me he could spare you for another few weeks,” Mikel says, with the air of someone laying down a final card. “And I will come back with you, once we have ridden along the cliffs. You can show me where you go to listen to all of the thoughts in your head, so I can imagine you there when I’m away working.”

Despite herself, Aimee feels warmed.

“You’ll be thinking of me?” she asks, and has to take a sip of wine to cover how that flusters her. 

Aimee is strong and capable and independent. These aren’t things she thinks about herself in any especially admiring way: they’re just facts. She doesn’t ask wistfully whether her lovers will think about her, because too many times in the past she’s been sure the answer is ‘no’, or at least ‘not enough’.

But Mikel’s smile is softer now, and she reaches for Aimee’s hand.

“I will think of you,” she says. “How could I not?”

And Aimee feels Mikel’s hand on hers, and pictures riding horses together along a cliff-top, and smiles. 

***

They stand by the railing again, eating one last ice-cream, and this time Mikel has her arm wrapped around Aimee’s waist, and Aimee leans back against her. 

Mikel’s awful yellow sunglasses are perched on Aimee’s nose and sea-spray tangles her hair. 

“Will we come back here, do you think?” Aimee asks, by this point, after driving up the coast and back over the last few days, trusting enough to reach for that future. 

“Yes,” Mikel says. “I like it here. I like the way you look standing looking out to sea.”

Aimee smiles.

“Ice-cream’s not bad, either,” she says, and her smile widens as Mikel kisses the back of her neck. “Though not as good as that feels.”

She feels Mikel smile against her skin. 

Turns out a sports car isn’t the best place to follow up on that thought, but Mikel is very creative. They make it work.


End file.
